Month: June 2017

In the song “Smile,” Jay raps about his beef with Apple and the streaming music industry as a whole:

“F— a slice of the apple pie, want my own cake / Chargin’ my own fate / Respect Jimmy Iovine / But he gotta respect the Elohim as a whole new regime / And n—– playin’ for power, huh / So our music is ours”

But Tidal has struggled to grow its business and faced numerous setbacks over the past couple of years, and Apple was rumored to be eyeing a takeover last fall.

“Apple Music in iOS 11 brings new social features that help you discover new music based on what your friends are playing. The new friends feature is already available to test in the iOS 11 developer and public beta to give us an idea of how it will work on Apple Music later this fall.”View More

The iPhone’s potential was obviously deep, but it was so deep as to be unfathomable at the time. The original iPhone didn’t even shoot video; today the iPhone and iPhone-like Android phones have largely killed the point-and-shoot camera industry. It has obviated portable music players, audio recorders, paper maps, GPS devices, flashlights, walkie-talkies, music radio (with streaming music), talk radio (with podcasts), and more. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft wouldn’t even make sense pre-iPhone. Social media is mobile-first, and in some cases mobile-only. More people read Daring Fireball on iPhones than on desktop computers.

In just a handful of years, Nokia and BlackBerry, both seemingly impregnable in 2006, were utterly obliterated. The makers of ever-more-computer-like gadgets were simply unable to compete with ever-more-gadget-like computers.

Ten years in and the full potential of the iPhone still hasn’t been fully tapped. No product in the computing age compares to the iPhone in terms of societal or financial impact. Few products in the history of the world compare. We may never see anything like it again — from Apple or from anyone else.

A “Perfect” looking back piece on the iPhone introduction from John Gruber. Encapsulating the “Where were you when the iPhone was introduced” moment, the “Holy shit!” experience when holding it in your hands for the first time and its remarkable effect on the industry. Here’s to another ten years.

“There’s no avoiding it: High Sierra, the next major release of macOS, is going to feel like a somewhat boring update to most people. It’s full of foundational refinements and new technologies that will prepare your Mac for very cool things that are coming over the next few years.”View More

“Alpine showed of its wireless Apple Carplay receiver, the iLX-107, at CES this year, and now, that device is available from authorized retailers in North America. The 7-inch VGA touchscreen also controls external accessories through a separate controller.”View More

In terms of the tasks I need my computing device for, I do some dorky technical stuff, and I use automation utilities, and some scripting, and I also produce actual work. Plus I do all the usual web browsing and email and social media. The iPad isn’t a laptop replacement, because it’s not a laptop. I wasn’t looking for one. I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone under twenty years of age with a laptop, either. But the iPad has replaced my MacBook. That’s a fact.

No-one’s saying that it either can or can’t replace yours, or whether you’d want it to. Except the pundits and journalists who can’t seem to let go of the idea that it’s an either-or situation, where we need to have a winner and a loser. I’m not sure what they’re afraid of.